Page:Keeping the Peace.pdf/204

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his curiosity and was promptly invited to spend the following Sunday at Beaulieu's home in the country.

Beaulieu lived in a very small Louis Thirteenth hunting lodge in the outskirts of St. Germain. The lodge had some acres of park surrounding it, with what the English call "an ornamental water" and some groups of fine old limes. There were fine old flinty walls draped with ivy, a snailery, an antique glass-house and here and there a graceful urn carved from stone.

In this little park Beaulieu did most of his landscape work, arranging and rearranging nature. He painted many pictures in the course of a year, priced them modestly and sold them readily. Con sequently he was a rich man for an artist and ought to have been very happy.

Madame Beaulieu was only half her husband's age—if he really was her husband—and very pretty. She was a little thing, compactly made, with a rich mouth and smoldering yellowish brown eyes. She made a great fuss over Edward on the occasion of his first visit and of his second. They succeeded in making him feel as much at home as if he had always known them and had always been made welcome in their house. And it was arranged that in the spring, when the St. André murals were finished, he should come to visit them